When you take a temperature, you are trying to measure how hot your child is inside their body. This is called their 'core temperature'.
You measure the temperature in places that are closest to the inside temperature:
In hospital, doctors and nurses sometimes measure temperatures in children's bottoms - they take a rectal temperature. Don't take your child's temperature this way at home.
The normal temperature inside your child's body is around 37 degrees Celsius. Your child's brain helps control their core temperature and to keep it around that level.
After 3 months of age, body temperature changes with a daily rhythm - rising toward the end of the day before dropping overnight and then slowly coming up to about 37 in the morning.
Young babies are not as good at controlling their temperature as older children.
A fever is when the temperature is more than 38 degrees Celsius. A fever by itself does not indicate whether your child is seriously sick or not.
Check more content on temperatures and thermometers [1]
Check the KidsHealth section on childhood illness - the basics [2]
This page last reviewed 07 March 2022.
Email us [3] your feedback
Links
[1] https://kidshealth.org.nz/temperatures-thermometers
[2] https://kidshealth.org.nz/tags/childhood-illness-basics
[3] https://kidshealth.org.nz/contact?from=http%3A%2F%2Fkidshealth.org.nz%2Fprint%2F2012%3Flanguage%3Dzh-hans